


Bad End

by MeetTheTank



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Angst, Bad Ending, F/M, Game: Resident Evil CODE: Veronica, Whump, shit's bad yo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28743237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeetTheTank/pseuds/MeetTheTank
Summary: What if Alexia had simply left Claire and Steve to die in the Antarctic after destroying their snowmobile?
Relationships: Steve Burnside/Claire Redfield
Comments: 9
Kudos: 11





	Bad End

**Author's Note:**

> I got the brainworms for these two real bad and I needed to get them out, so I took one of my old stories from FFnet and touched it up a bit to scratch that itch. I also got another Steve centric thing brewing for all 2 Steve fans out there.

Of all the perils that had plagued them on this now two day long mess, Steve Burnside never once thought that freezing to death would be their downfall. They were in the clear...how could this have happened?

They had made it past all the zombies, mutants, even the maniacal Alfred Ashford. They had beaten him, taken the snowmobile and were on their way to...Damnit, Claire knew where they were going. She had the map, she was driving, but something happened...The snowmobile had flipped and had been crushed by...something.

Claire...Where was she? Steve tried to turn to face the drivers side, but he couldn't? There was something pinning him down, keeping him from even craning his head around. What was-...

Oh...

The treads were crushing his chest, and he was becoming painfully aware of how hard it was to breathe. Each inhale was cut short and each exhale let the vehicle press harder into his ribs. He tried to shift his weight back and forth, but no matter how much he struggled the snowmobile wouldn’t budge. With his arms pinned as well he couldn’t even dig himself free...

"Steve?!"

He knew that voice. It sounded like it was underwater but it was unmistakable. He would have called out to its owner, but all that came out of his mouth as a pained breath. However, that seemed to be enough, seeing as his valkyrie was pushing through debris and snowdrifts to get to him.

"Oh Jesus-..." Claire gasped when she saw him pinned beneath the treads, "J-..hang on I'm gonna get you out of here, Steve. Okay? Just hang in there..."

There was a chunk of metal, the front bumper or part of the roof, sticking out from under the machinery, and it was at the perfect angle to act as leverage. Claire shuffled over, breathlessly telling him that he was going to make it out of here. Feebly, he tried to push the treads up with what little strength he had. It didn't budge much, but it gave him a bit more room to breath. 

"Cl-..." he tried to say.

"S-shush." Claire put a hand over his mouth to shut him up, "S-s-save your breath..."

She grunted and put all her weight onto the piece of metal. The treads raised up with dangerous sounding creaks and groans, but he was able to take in a huge gulp of frigid air. It burned his throat and lungs but he took another one just to relish in the relief.

"Move, move!" Claire shouted at him, her entire body shuddering.

Steve shimmied out from under the treads, then immediately flipped over to his hands and knees and vomited what little he had eaten on the sea plane into the snow, followed by an intense coughing fit as his body recovered from nearly suffocating. His vision blurred, with little white dots swimming in his eyes each time another bout of coughs wracked his body. Claire rubbed his back, but she didn't seem to be doing any better, seeing as she was struggling to even stand upright. He only thought that she was just tired from lifting the treads until he saw little red drops on the snow...

"We...we need to move.." She muttered, leaning down to help him up.

That's when he noticed the blood running down her arm, the dark stains on her vest, and the huge piece of glass sticking out of her shoulder...

She must have taken note of his horrified expression..., "I'll be fine, but we're going to freeze to death if we don't move."

"Y-you're not fine!" he choked back, "There's-s-s a huge piece of glass in your s-s-s..." He couldn't even finish his sentence with his teeth clacking together.

"The Aus-s-strailian outpost w-will help! We are not dying out here now get up!"

Claire was practically screaming at him over the howling winds, and like the moron he was, he just sat there with his mouth open. He had never seen this kind of desperation in Claire all those times they had faced death on Rockfort and in the Antarctic facility. Then again...there had always been a clear way out. Shoot the zombie, burn the mutants, solve the puzzle. The only way out of this was to walk across the Antarctic tundra in the middle of a snowstorm with no proper clothing. Not to mention Claire was bleeding badly, and he probably had broken ribs or a punctured lung. Or both if he was really unlucky.

Steve reluctantly allowed himself to be supported by Claire, for now at least. As she stated, she could walk much better than he could. Even still, their pace was little more than a shuffle when pitted against snow and wind. They huddled close together, so close that their clouds of pained breaths mingled together. He could feel her shivering violently against him with each step. For Steve though, each breath caused painful tremors to shoot through his body. He definitely had some broken ribs. He couldn’t tell if he was shivering from the cold or the pain anymore.

They walked in silence for what seemed like hours, and only a faint silhouette could be seen on the horizon. Steve could only hope that it was the outpost that Claire had mentioned...

Claire...

She was dragging her feet pretty badly now. It was only now that it occurred to Steve that she had been losing a lot of blood. Looking back at their trail it was easy to see just how bad she was doing. Her eyelids drooped, breathing shallow and ragged, and soft pink lips were now blue and quivering with each breath. And even still, she was supporting his weight, forcing herself to move forward. She knew that if they stopped, they would die.

That's when she collapsed onto the snow a shivering mess. She was having a much harder time breathing now, her face was twisted with pain and silent screams. She had tears in her eyes and frozen trails down her cheeks. Ice clung to her skin like a shell and snow stained her hair white.

Steve fell to his knees beside her, frantically trying to find a way to help. In the gentlest way possible, he pulled her freezing body close to his, and leaned over her as if to shield her from the winds with his own body. He could barely feel her, his fingers had long since gone numb.

"I gotcha." he whispered to her, "I'm not going anywhere...I gotcha..."

She tried to form words through clenched teeth, "St-...can't..w-w-...my leg..."

Steve's gaze drifted down to her legs. At first it looked like everything was normal, but he did notice that her left leg looked...wrong. It was twisted, her foot pointing inward. Definitely broken. It made his stomach turn. And...she had been walking on it, and carrying his sorry ass across the ice and snow. So much for her knight in shining armor...

He pulled off his thin prisoner jacket and tried to drape it around Claire, but she shoved it away with a quivering hand.

"You'll f-freeze..."

"S-so will you if-f you keep being s-stubborn."

He wrapped the jacket around her shivering body, and with what little strength he had he lifted her up. His entire torso screamed in pain, sending searing waves of agony through him that pushed him back down to his knees. Despite this, he mustered up the strength to push onward, shuffling on his knees at first. Once his body became used to holding Claire, he planted his boot in the snow, and forced himself to stand. Steve refused to fall again, not when they had only two options. Move forward, or die. If he didn't make himself move, Claire would die.

It started slowly, one foot deliberately and carefully placed in front of the other. He moved slower than those zombies they had taken down together, but he was moving. The whole top of his body was bent over top of hers, not just because of the pain. He wanted to at least try to keep her warm. Hopefully, he would lose feeling in his sides before he passed out from the pain. His legs and hands were already lost, and his arms were well on their way.

Steve kept walking, and eventually the faint outline of the outpost formed into a more defined building. They were so close! Safety was right in front of them! They had beaten all the dangers and the struggle and now they were going to make it!

"Claire, look! There's the outpost!" he cheered.

...Why didn't she answer?

"Claire?.." Steve gave her a small shake.

Oh no...She wasn't moving... Her eyes were closed, jaw slacked, and body limp...

"No no no Claire!"

She was just passed out...right? Yeah..yeah that was it! She had been losing a lot of blood, and walking on a broken leg. She probably just passed out from the pain.

..Then why couldn't he see her breath...

"Claire come on...Wake up! We're almost there!" he pleaded.

"Claire please..." His eyes welled up and a lump formed in his throat, "Don't do this, please...we're so close..."

Steve sunk to his knees, clutching her limp body close to his in a last desperate attempt to keep her warm.

"You can't die now...Th-this isn't how things end...please..."

Tears spilled down his cheeks onto the limp girl in his arms. He choked out small, broken noises as he clung to Claire's body. The violent sobs and tremors wracked his body more than any cold induced shivering could. He sat there in the snow, holding Claire’s body as tightly as his frozen limbs would allow.

"Please...No...It doesn't end like this...please...Claire..."

He put his forehead against hers, "I-...Goddamnit I love you!"

A faint, warm breeze hit his neck, jolting him out of his grief. There was a pause, and then another one, just the same as before. It was slow, and sparse, but rhythmic and consistent. He looked down at Claire and saw her chapped blue lips quivering slightly. She was breathing. She was alive.

Steve was never a religious man, but he thanked every higher power he could remember off the top of his head that Claire was alive. He laughed and he cried at the same time and he knew that Claire would make fun of the noises he was making if she could hear them. But he didn't care. She was alive.

He rose to his feet again with renewed strength and pushed onward. They were going to live.

They were only a half a mile away from the outpost when that changed to "she" was going to live.

The cold had taken its toll on Steve. He had lost feeling in his entire body. His hold on the barely breathing Claire was slipping. His vision blurred and exhaustion threatened to overtake him. But he had to keep going.

He had to.

He had to...

He had to rest...

…

**Author's Note:**

> Yo if anyone got a RE fic discord server or a Steve x Claire server hiding out there hit me up so I can tame these brainworms before they hatch into brainspiders.


End file.
